I thought about the missing DLLs because that is a common issue for many applications when a user uninstalls and reinstalls an application without restating window after the uninstall before the reinstall.
A user uninstalls an application, but the uninstaller could not immediately delete all files and directories as some files are currently loaded by another process like Windows Explorer which has loaded the the context menu DLLs. So the uninstaller uses the Windows function
MoveFileEx to tell Windows to remove the currently used files and folders on next start of Windows at a very early state during the start. Most uninstallers including the uninstallers of the IDM applications do not inform the user that a restart of Windows is necessary to complete the uninstall as most users are not happy about such a message. Such a file operation done on start of Windows is called a pending file rename operation.
It can be executed in a Windows command prompt window:
Code: Select all
%SystemRoot%\System32\reg.exe query "HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager" /ve
%SystemRoot%\System32\reg.exe query "HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager" /v PendingFileRenameOperations
%SystemRoot%\System32\reg.exe query "HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager" /v PendingFileRenameOperations2
If the first one is successful, i.e. the registry key is correct entered, and the second and third command produce an error message because of neither the multi-line registry string value
PendingFileRenameOperations nor
PendingFileRenameOperations2 (never seen by me) exist under this registry key, then it is safe to immediately reinstall the just uninstalled application. But if either
PendingFileRenameOperations or
PendingFileRenameOperations2 is output by the second or the third command, it is highly recommended to restart Windows before reinstalling the application into the same directory as before as it could otherwise happen that some files of the already reinstalled application like the shell extension DLLs of UltraEdit are deleted on next restart of Windows.
I always restart Windows after an uninstall of an application before I reinstall it in same, newer or older version. Sometimes I can see after an uninstall that there are left program files in program files directory of the just uninstalled application. In some cases the program files directory and some files and subdirectories of an uninstalled application are even left after restart of Windows. In this case I delete as administrator the program files directory of the uninstalled application when I am 100% sure that the remaining files and directories are really no longer needed after the uninstall, i.e. the remaining files and directories are not user configuration files and also do not belong to another application or service of the same company which are still installed. For example UltraEdit, UEStudio and UltraCompare use all the files in
%ProgramFiles%\IDM Computer Solutions\Common (64-bit) respectively
%ProgramFiles(x86)%\IDM Computer Solutions\Common (32-bit). That are so called shard DLLs managed with a counter for each file in Windows registry, so that the uninstaller of each application knows when it is safe to remove also the files used by multiple applications.
